Attachment A
Amtrak On-Time Performance for the First Half of FY 2011
Year-to-Date Totals for October 2010 through March 2011

Test 1: Test 2:
v Higher Percent On Time at Route Endpoints Constant or Better

Indicates YTD - March 2011 vs. YTD - March 2010 Effective Speed

both tests

were met % Proposed | % Variance | Change in MPH from

for OTP FYIL% Change Target for | from FY11 | October 2008 Baseline

Progress On Time __| from FY10 FY Target for Last 4 Quarters
Northeast Corridor Service (Goal proposed for FY 2012: 95%)
Acela 81.7% 0.8% 93.6% | (11.8%) (1)
Regional Service 77.0% 1.8% 91.6% (14.6%) (0.4)
Other Corridor Services (Goal proposed for FY 2012: 90%. Minimum target pronased for FV 2011: 85%)
Adirondack 73.6% (0.8%) 85.0% (11.4%) 0.5
Blue Water 63.6% (5.6%) 85.0% (21.4%) 2.6
Capitols v 95.4% 44% 86.9% 8.5% 2.0
Carolinian v 67.3% 11.2% 85.0% 7.7%) 0.3
Cascades 66.7% (4.3%) 85.0% (18.3%) 0.3
Downeaster 80.7% (0.7%) 87.6% (6.9%) (0.3)
Empire Service 79.4% (5.8%) 86.3% (7.0%) 0.9
Ethan Allen Express 62.0% (20.2%) 85.0% (23.0%) 0.0
Heartland Flyer 87.8% (0.7%) 85.0% 2.8% 3.3
Hiawatha 86.7% (3.5%) 89.8% G.1%) (0.6)
Hoosier State 62.4% (13.0%) 85.0% (22.6%) 1.8
Mini v 52.1% 1.0% 85.8% (33.7%) L8
Illinois Zephyr 91.2% (2.7%) 85.0% 6.2% 12
Keystone 86.4% 1.4% 89.1% (2.7%) (0.5)
Lincoln Service 68.7% (7.7%) 85.0% (16.3%) 18
Maple Leaf 69.8% (9.6%) 85.0% (15.2%) 0.7
Missouri Services 89.5% (3.6%) 85.0% 4.5% 8.0
Pacific Surfliner 79.8% (0.5%) 87.0% (7.2%) 0.0
Pennsylvanian v 91.2% 0.8% 86.3% 4.9% 0.2
Pere Marquette 59.4% (0.6%) 85.0% (25.6%) 2.5
Piedmont 79.2% (0.4%) 86.9% (7.7%) 0.7
San Joaquins v 90.8% 1.0% 85.6% 5.2% 1.3
Vermonter 77.2% (9.1%) 85.0% (7.8%) 2.0
Wolverines 33.2% (36.1%) 85.0% (51.8%) 13
Long Distance Trains (Goal proposed for FY 2012: 85%. Minimum target proposed for FY 2011: 78.8%)
Auto Train v 92.0% 5.2% 80.4% 11.6% 1.2
California Zephyr 51.8% (7.6%) 78.8% (26.9%) 2.6
Capitol Limited 57.7% (14.8%) 78.8% (21.1%) LS
Cardinal 47.1% (19.6%) 78.8% G1L7%) 0.9
City of New Orleans 77.7% (3.0%) 85.0% (7.3%) Ld
Coast Starlight 71.6% (16.8%) 78.8% (7.1%) Ll
Crescent 76.1% (0.8%) 78.8% (2.7%) 0.0
Empire Builder 43.2% (34.2%) 82.7% (39.5%) (0.7)
Lake Shore Limited 62.9% (21.4%) 78.8% (15.8%) 0.8
Palmetto v 83.5% 13.1% 78.8% 4.8% 0.5
Silver Meteor v 82.6% 12.0% 78.8% 3.8% 0.5
Silver Star 70.1% (7.6%) 78.8% (8.7%) 10
Southwest Chief. 80.5% (5.2%) 80.0% 0.5% 0.2
Sunset Limited 86.5% (3.8%) 78.8% 7.8% 29
Texas Eagle 73.6% 0.0% 78.8% (5.1%) 3.0



La)

U.S. Department Administrator 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
of Transportation Washington, DC 20590

Federal Railroad
Administration

JUL 8 2011

The Honorable Daniel K. Inouye
Chairman, Committee on Appropriations
United States Senate

Washington, DC 20510

Dear Mr. Chairman:

Section 154 of the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related
Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010 (Pub. L. 111-117) requires the Federal Railroad
Administrator to “submit a report on April 1, 2010, and quarterly reports thereafter, to
the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations detailing the Administrator's
efforts at improving the on-time performance of Amtrak intercity rail service operating
on non-Amtrak owned property. Such reports shall compare the most recent actual on-
time performance data to pre-established on-time performance goals that the
Administrator shall set for each rail service, identified by route. Such reports shall also
include whatever other information and data regarding the on-time performance of
Amtrak trains the Administrator deems to be appropriate.”

I am pleased to submit the quarterly report in accordance with this requirement. I hope
that the information contained in the enclosed report will assist the Committee in its
work.

Identical letters have been sent to the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on
Appropriations, and to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Committee on
Appropriations.

Sincerely,

Joseph C. Szabo
Administrator

Enclosures


July 2011 Report on Amtrak On-Time Performance
Submitted by the Federal Railroad Administrator
Under Section 154 of Pub. L. 111-117
This report includes two sections: (1) an update on recent Federal Railroad Administration
(FRA) efforts to catalyze and effect improvements in Amtrak’s on-time performance
(OTP); and (2) in keeping with the FRA’s April 1, 2011 OTP report, an update on Amtrak’s
OTP results and performance against FRA-established goals.

(1) OTP Highlights through May of Fiscal Year (FY) 2011

OTP Benefits of the High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail (HSIPR) Program: On May 9,
2011, the Obama Administration announced the most recent round of selected programs
and projects within 15 States, including the Amtrak-owned Northeast Corridor, under the
FRA’s HSIPR Program (a complete list of selected investments is available at:
www.fra.dot.gov/roa/press_releases/fp_DOT_57-11.shtml). Through the States and now
Amtrak, this program has committed approximately $10.1 billion for projects to upgrade
existing passenger rail operations, while also introducing new high-speed rail services, all
for the purpose of strengthening intercity passenger transportation in populated corridors.

Many of the HSIPR awards will ultimately raise the effective speed of the benefiting
services through a combination of better reliability (through capacity additions and other
means) and/or higher running speeds. FRA, Amtrak, the States, and host railroads have
been working to develop agreements for the performance improvement(s) in intercity
passenger rail service that are to be realized upon completion of the respective projects.
Accordingly, the completion of the FRA’s HSIPR betterments will directly improve the
OTP of the affected routes, as measured in this series of OTP reports to Congress as well as
the Metrics and Standards reports required under Section 207 of the Passenger Rail
Investment and Improvement Act of 2008 (PRIIA).

Publication of Metrics and Standards Reports: Stemming from the May 12, 2010
publication of the final Metrics and Standards for intercity passenger rail services, which
FRA developed jointly with Amtrak in compliance with Section 207 of the Passenger Rail
Investment and Improvement Act of 2008 (PRIIA), FRA (with Amtrak’s assistance) has
published the second quarterly Metrics and Standards report, available on FRA’s webpage
at www. fra.dot.gov/rpd/passenger/2165.shtml. This report provides data on Amtrak’s
financial, operational, and service quality performance during the first quarter of FY 2011.
A key feature of the operational information is the delay minutes Amtrak experiences on
the host railroads for each route.

Metrics and Standards data collected for the first quarter of FY 2011 illustrate the spectrum
of reliability that Amtrak experiences across its system, with some Class I railroads
exceeding the delay minutes standard on most, if not all, of the Amtrak trains they host.
The next report of Metrics and Standards will show results from data collected for the
second quarter of FY 2011.

Implementation of the Metrics and Standards: System-wide, Amtrak has been working with
the host railroads to ensure that they are managing intercity passenger rail performance to



the implemented Metrics and Standards. On the Southeast Corridor in particular,
operations of the Amtrak Silver Meteor and Palmetto on CSX-owned railroad lines met the
standard for host-responsible delays between January and March of 2011. On two routes
with less than satisfactory results, Amtrak and CSX are focusing on improvements to the
Carolinian and Northeast Regional services to Richmond and Newport News, VA, which
have higher delays that exceed the applicable standard. In addition, Amtrak remains
interested in removing extra recovery time that was temporarily added to the Auto Train
schedule in FY 2007; however, CSX and Amtrak have not yet arrived at an agreement to
effect this change.

The FRA believes that over the long term, the ongoing reporting of the quarterly Metrics
and Standards with added detail, coupled with related provisions in other sections of the
PRIIA, will provide additional impetus for the host railroads and Amtrak to emphasize their
collaborative efforts toward OTP improvement.

(2) Goals and Route Performance

Attachment A contains OTP statistics for all Amtrak routes for the first half of FY 2011.

As the attachment illustrates, a fifth of the routes (9) had improvements in OTP (in terms of
both improved percent on time and no decrease in effective speed) through March of FY
2011. Of those routes experiencing OTP improvement, a total of six (three corridor-type
and three long-distance trains) are meeting, or surpassing, their FRA-defined OTP target for
FY 2011. By contrast, four-fifths of the routes showed declining OTP, declining effective
speed, or both.

The OTP across the entire Amtrak system for FY 2011 through March was 79.1 percent,
which is nearly a two percentage-point decrease from the previous year. This decline in
system-wide performance is largely attributable to the OTP experience of the long-distance
trains, which declined by 9.1 percentage-points in the first half of FY 2011 compared to the
previous year (for an average endpoint OTP of 68.7 percent). Further highlighting this
downturn in OTP, 80 percent of the long-distance trains have experienced a year-over-year
decline in on-time arrivals in FY 2011 through March.

Amtrak’s short distance routes outside the NEC (i.e. “Other Corridor Services”)
experienced a smaller decline in OTP than the long-distance trains during the first half of
the fiscal year (for a year-over-year decline of 2.6 percentage-points) and had an average
endpoint OTP of 80.2 percent during the first half of FY 2011. However, as was the case
with the long-distance trains, over four-fifths of the short distance routes had year-over-
year declines in on-time arrivals through March of this fiscal year.

During the second quarter of the fiscal year, freight train interference was a primary or
secondary cause for the largest number of delay minutes on nearly all the long- distance
routes. Other prominent causes included slow order delays due to heat-related track speed
restrictions, and signal problems for example. Clearly, additional attention and cooperation
will be needed between Amtrak and the freight railroads to safeguard and improve the OTP
of intercity passenger rail operations.